Veneri came back to awareness inside the Belvedere, sitting at the white marble table as though he had never left it. The endless terrace stretched around him. The ground was the same still water. Across from him, Thyrexxa and Sunshine were still seated in perfect composure, both of them calmly drinking tea and eating cookies like the last sequence of reality had not involved a woman dissolving into light in his arms.
The sight did not settle him. It did the opposite.
His gaze glared onto Sunshine immediately. This time there was no hesitation at all as he moved. He crossed the table in a blur and grabbed her by the collar, pulling her forward with enough force to jolt the table and disturb the teacups.
"Bring her back."
Sunshine remained completely unbothered even as her collar was held in his grip. She met his eyes calmly and answered without delay.
"That is not possible."
His grip tightened instinctively as disbelief twisted into anger.
"Not possible? You are the Primordial of Destiny. I accepted her death because I thought she would be reborn somewhere else. Deities are practically immortal. She used everything she had for… for—"
The sentence broke off because there was no clean way to finish it without accepting what he refused to accept. His hand released her abruptly and in the same motion he slammed both palms onto the table. The force cracked the surface and sent tea spilling across it in uneven streams. The sound echoed through the belvedere but it did nothing to match the pressure building inside him.
Thyrexxa exhaled slowly, watching the mess settle across the table before speaking in a tone that carried neither urgency nor surprise.
"Sirithiele chose this. It's exactly as I told you before the first time you met me. Destiny is a choice and whatever choice a being makes that defines their life carries an outcome that cannot be changed once it becomes reality. Sirithiele chose this Destiny. She chose to sacrifice herself at the end in order to complete Vasreveilder's plan, and she did so knowing exactly what it meant."
Sunshine finally set her cup down after fixing her collar.
"Destiny and Fate are among the most restricted of all Primordials because they are bound directly to living existence. Once a being makes a defining decision, that decision becomes fixed into reality itself. It cannot be undone or rewritten externally because it is no longer separate from the existence it came from. The only reason you managed to change your Fate is because you discovered a loophole. You exposed contradiction and unfairness during your judgment with the other Primordials after the First Epoch Cycle, and through that argument you forced an exception into what would have otherwise been absolute. Without that anomaly, you would not have escaped it."
Thyrexxa added in a quieter voice.
"Sirithiele chose this millennia ago. She has been alive all this time for the purpose of reaching this outcome and Vasreveilder ensured that path using the Time Fragments. If you are looking for someone to blame, it's not Sunshine. It's Vasreveilder. He held the fragments and gave them to her."
For a moment, Veneri didn't move. The anger that had flared again did not disappear, but it no longer had anywhere stable to go. Slowly, he lowered himself back into his chair. When he spoke again, his voice was calm.
"So this was your plan from the beginning?"
Sunshine answered instead.
"You chose the path that led here. No one else forced the direction of your steps. Sirithiele is gone completely. Her body, soul, and spirit have been erased. The Forced Ascension succeeded and you are now a Seventh Enlightenment Divine."
Veneri leaned back in his chair and stared upward into the sky of the domain, letting the silence stretch long enough for everything to sink in properly. When he finally spoke again, it came out low and hollow.
"The universe is cruel. I met her for a single day and she was erased for all eternity because of that."
Sunshine set her teacup down with precise care, then looked at him as if evaluating a problem that had already reached a conclusion.
"I cannot feel empathy in the way you mean it. I don't know what it's like to experience what you're experiencing. But I can recognize when something qualifies as suffering."
Her gaze shifted slightly toward the shattered table and the spilled tea still slowly sliding across the water.
"And this qualifies. Because of that, I will offer you a blessing."
Thyrexxa's eyes narrowed slightly at that but she did not interrupt.
"It is the best blessing I can give under your current condition. It is necessary for what comes next for you."
Sunshine leaned forward slightly, resting her hands together on the table as if presenting terms rather than offering mercy.
"However, if you accept this, you will not be able to fuse your Pentarchs together until you reach the same rank as the Time Pentarch. This is not a restriction I'm placing on you arbitrarily. This is a Destiny condition."
Her golden eyes remained fixed on him.
"If you accept this offer, your path will branch into one future. If you reject it, it will branch into another. Everything that happens to you within that interval will be the result of your own choice and nothing else."
"Is it worth it?"
Sunshine answered immediately. "Yes. That's why I called you here."
"If I refuse, what happens?"
"You'll still grow but the trajectory will diverge. It won't align with what is required for the Time Fragments you now carry. And you'll be doing so without knowing what you're sacrificing in the process."
That made Veneri think for a moment.
"I need more power so I'll take it."
"Are you sure?"
That question lingered longer than the others. If Thyrexxa asked this about him, then it meant that the consequences of getting that power would not be easy.
"As long as I don't die at the end, I can manage whatever comes in between. And if I do die before then, at least I'll be strong enough to protect the people I care about until that point."
Sunshine extended her hand across the table. Veneri looked at it for a moment longer than necessary, then reached out and shook it. The moment contact was made, the belvedere shifted. His presence destabilized for a fraction of a second, like reality failed to agree on where he should exist and vanished. Thyrexxa looked at the empty space across the table, then down at the ruined tea and scattered cookies. A faint sigh escaped her as she surveyed the damage.
"For the first time, he didn't take a single cookie."
Sunshine followed her gaze, then gave a small nod.
"He's angry."
"And you think this was the right gift to give him?"
"Yes. He'll understand it later. And when he does, he'll be glad it happened this way."